Nico Minoru
"People always say teenagers think they’re immortal, but I… I don’t think that. I mean all I ever think about is death. When my mom jammed that staff-thing into my chest, all I could think was… I’m surprised I even lived this long." - Nico about her life Nico Minoru is the unofficial leader of the Runaways. She's the daughter of two dark magicians who belonged to a powerful group called The Pride, who ruled Los Angeles. She is the owner of the mystical and extremely powerful Staff of One. Sister Grimm was the name used by Nico during the brief time that the Runaways used codenames. Everyone except Molly Hayes and Old Lace have since abandonned using code names, though. Background Nico Minoru is the next in a very long line of mages, the Minoru clan has lasted for ages and been a dominant family in the magic-wielding world. Most mages know their name and respect or fear the Minoru clan for their skill and power. It's really too bad that Nico wasn't told any of that, because she really could have used a bit of proper Minoru training in order to become the mage she could some day be. Instead, Robert and Tina Minoru met with a group of other pairs when they were recruited by ancient beings known as the Gibborim, who offered them a shot at immortality in return for betraying and wiping out the entire human race. Only six of the twelve members could become immortal, so the best of the team would be chosen at the end of the period. The Minoru couple brought their ample magical power to the team which dubbed itself 'The Pride', and with their powers enhanced by the Gibborim, they proceeded to take over and dominate the entire Los Angeles area's crime population, allowing no dissidents on pain of sudden and immediate death. They sacrificed the life and soul of one innocent person to the Gibborim every year, with a twenty year time period to fulfill. Several years after the Pride's creation, some of the couples found out that they were pregnant. This fact threw a wrench into the plan of immortality, but the entire Pride chose to hand the six priceless spots to their children; one child per couple, so six might life and rule the new world. Tina and Robert produced a daughter, Nico, who spent most of her life in the dark about her parents' criminal and genocidal night job until at one yearly gathering Nico and her friends watched their parents sacrifice an innocent girl's life. That very night, the kids grabbed Molly Hayes (a mutant with immense physical strength) and Karolina Dean (a colour-shifting alien with flight and light powers) who were not there to see the murder, ransacked their parents' homes and ran. The team dubbed themselves The Runaways, taking on nicknames as super-heroes in an attempt to throw off the history their parents had given them as their birthrights. Chase Stein was Talkback, though he had no powers and had not inherited his parents amazing technological skills. Nico took on the name of Sister Grimm, but barely used the nickname before the entire team (with the young Molly Hayes being the standout exception) gave up their monikers and went back to their birth names. They stole the large froglike vehicle known as Leapfrog and made their way without money, but with a dinosaur and the entire country looking for them; their parents made them out to be the murderers of the girl they had killed, and kidnappers of Molly as well. (Princess Powerful) While running, Nico encountered her parents. In that encounter, Nico's mother revealed the family business, that of dark wizardry. Attempting to disable Nico without using magic, Tina Minoru struck Nico with the Staff of One, which chose that moment to transfer ownership to the child and was absorbed into Nico's chest, to emerge again any time Nico's blood was spilled. The staff emerges and is re-absorbed after a while, never more than a few hours at most. Access to many of the staff's powers took a lot of practice and were not very powerful, even though Nico's mother stated that the staff was strong enough to 'make the dread Dormammu tremble'. The betrayal of one of their number, Alex Wilder (no nickname chosen), broke Nico rather badly. She believed that she was in love with him at the time, and she may have been correct. He seemed to love her, but not enough to tell her that he was leaking information to their parents all the time about the Runaways locations and activities, and when he actively betrayed the team during their attempt to stop their parents from destroying the earth, Alex Wilder was killed. The Runaways did indeed stop their parents from sacrificing their next victim, which ended the twenty year pact and also their parents' lives as the Gibborim slew them all mercilessly for their failure. The children were met by Captain America, who took them in and put the children into the publicly available homes for people of their types. The humans went to foster homes. Molly, as a mutant, went to a mutant care school which Gertrude Yorkes, another member of their team, broke her out of so they could rejoin the team. And they all ran once again. The team met and fought many enemies. Molly punched Wolverine through a wall...twice. A new Pride emerged, led by the reincarnated father of Alex Wilder. Gertrude was killed by the new Pride, and the entire team feels the loss every day. Gertrude was a force for stability in the Runaways, and only the first to die. After a while running, the Runaways found a device that would allow Leapfrog to use the time-travelling abilities of its creators, and they found themselves back in time. This was an event which allowed Nico to meet another Minoru who wasn't hunting her and trying to kill her: her grandmother. Her grandmother was not gentle with Nico however, finding the girl to be weak and untempered, a shame to the Minoru name. So she tortured Nico magically for a long time, inflicting all kinds of pain on the girl including sending crystal shards through her entire body as a warm-up before moving on to more serious punishments. The torture had its necessary effect: Nico learned to harness pain, and therefore to harness blood magic. The Staff of One began to be truly effective, and her spells became not only stronger but more complicated in their effects and better controlled. Nico began to be able to tap the Staff's powers for effects of her own, and when they returned to their normal time, she became a better leader with her fear of pain being paled compared to what her own family had done to her already. And Nico became what she is today: sore, tired, and determined to get her new family through another day. Because nobody dies on her watch. *Qualified open-water scuba ticket. *Played tuba in marching band. *Plays bass guitar. *Eats when under high stress, but that might be the blood magic. *Christian, and very spiritual. *Sews all of her own clothing, highly skilled as a seamstress. *Wears corrective contact lenses. More recently, Nico has begun training in magic under Raven of the Teen Titans. She has started learning actual magic, and has successfully removed a spell that she herself cast! Using blood magic as a base, she's started to take shape as an actual mage, not just a goth wannabe. Personality Daughter of wizards - Nico wasn't even aware of that little factoid for most of her life. She has an intense black spot in her where her parents are concerned; an anger that will likely last her entire life. Many people are mad at their parents. Very few actually had parents that they both loved and who were planning to destroy all of humanity at the same time. She's not likely to get over it any time soon, either. Untrusting - Yeah, Nico's not very trusting anymore. Especially if you're an adult. And being an adult isn't always about age. She had to grow up fast and the team doesn't get along well with adults. They keep trying to 'take care' of the kids, who are by their opinions quite capable of taking care of their own selves thank you very much. They do not need to be put into homes with responsible parents. See previous paragraph. Creative - Nico is probably the most creative member of the Runaways. She makes most of her own clothes and the outfits of many of the other members come out of her skilled hands. A lot of times she dresses in a goth style because she loves the intricacies of the outfits as much as anything else. Besides, sewing relaxes her. In other ways Nico has been forced to be creative in her powers; her spellcasting is self-limiting, and she has had to come up with a lot of very...interesting uses for the Staff in order to be even remotely useful. It's not the most forgiving of mentors. Leader - Little Nico, for all her lack of trust of others, has been pushed into the leader role of the Runaways for a long while now and she's managed to make a fairly decent job of it. Some people have died, and she takes that blame on her shoulders, carrying it with her forever. But she's managed to make a lot of good decisions, and has learned how to send her people out in the safest possible way in order to get the job done and, most importantly, not get people killed. Emotional - If there's any one thing that screws Nico up on a daily basis it's her emotions. She said once she's 'driven to get between people' which she used to describe her constant need to be close to anyone who has strong emotions, specifically love. Nico's not sure exactly how to love safely and securely, since her first boy betrayed her and then died. A string of poor relationship choices have followed, reinforcing the pattern. She's bad with love, but wants it desperately. Afraid - Nico's scared. There, I said it. You want to know one thing about Nico? She's fragile. She breaks like anyone else, a teenager her age with irregular meals, and she knows how fragile she really is and how easy it would be for a stray bullet to take her to an early plot in the dirt. That's one of her greatest strengths actually, because as a leader she can spot ways for her people to get killed and avoid them with strategic planning! Brutally Strong - Nico is very, very good at taking pain. Emotional and physical, though she's better at the physical. This is because she's been taking pain for ages. The Staff of One requires physical pain to even draw, and it draws little bits out of her whenever it's used. It requires emotional pain, remembrances of painful and awful, heartbreaking memories in order to cast at its most powerful levels, and Nico has been able to dredge up some real bodice-rippers sometimes. She does this kind of torture to herself ON PURPOSE in order to save her friends. Oh, and her Grandmother tortured her nearly to death also. Go figure, it's a family trait. Average - Now we come to the crux of Nico's problems. She's a fairly average person mentally. She's not a genius, doesn't have a huge memory which would allow her to really take advantage of the Staff with a huge mental dictionary of terms to draw from. She doesn't know everything and she is far too aware of it; it's rubbed in her face every time they get into a fight and everyone performs better than she does. She's constantly trying to keep up and wondering why these people trust her so much with their lives. Mom - Yeah, that's why. Nico is the mom, the mother of the group. She loves them all so much and she's terrified to lose any single one of them that she's willing to overcome all of her significant obstacles, stand in the front lines where she's one of the team's most likely to die before she'd let anyone else stand there and take that level of danger, and she'll move mountains, literally, for any one of her Runaways. Her family. Logs 2014 Logs *2014-07-01 - Runaways and Ravens - When the moon hits your eye, like a zombie pizza pie, that's Amora! *2014-07-03 - A Coffee A Day - Doctor Pieter Cross meets Peter Parker and Nico Minoru at the Warm Hands Cafe... *2014-07-05 - A Coffee a Day pt 2 - Nico re-emerges, mutants appear, insults. *2014-07-11 - Something's Not Right - A rag-tag group of heroes go to discover what's wrong in the NYC library. *2014-07-25 - Lollipop Hayes - A miscast spell ends Molly in a video game nightmare. *2014-08-31 - Runaway Program! - Control Freak takes his control to the MMORPG world. His plans are foiled by two meddling kids! *2014-08-28 - Hopeless - Richenda meets Nico Minoru, and something more might just happen. *2014-09-17 - A Day in Bludhaven - Nightwing comes across a girl in distress and helps out. It's the least he can do, really. *2014-09-20 - Nico's New Job - Nico Minoru visits Jim's Diner and gets interviewed for a job. By Supergirl! *2014-09-24 - Man From La Mancha - Bunch of randomness. *2014-10-03 - Any More Questions? - Molly's brain fights off the forces of sanity. *2014-10-20 - New York Visitors - Richenda and Nico are attacked, and Superman saves the day! Mostly. *2014-11-04 - A Magickal Tale Begins - A visit to a yarn store changes everything, as Halloween approaches. *2014-11-11 - The Dark Lady Demands Nachos - The child Supergirl expresses her displeasure and kidnaps people. There is too much. Just read it. *2014-11-24 - Children's Gambit - The end of the Child plotline, and the cat shall win them all. *2014-12-26 - Thoughts and Prayers - The Runaways take a moment for insight and hope. 2015 Logs *2015-01-06 - No Skill, No Problem - Nico Minoru and Kon-El meet over a car accident. They quickly realize that neither of them knows first aid. What? *2015-01-08 - And Now, Shopping - Nico Minoru is fired, and the Runaways celebrate with clothes shopping. *2015-02-28 - Breaking In the New Girl - Richenda gets her first lesson in what it means to truly be a Runaway. *2015-03-03 - Into The Wind - People respond to Hurricane Lawrence. *2015-03-31 - Picnic Interruptus - Nico bakes some chicken for a picnic with the Runaways. It goes about as well as expected. *2015-04-07 - Molly Hayes, Candy Gangster - So Molly gets a job selling candy, eats eight of them, and gets a different job selling candy, and Leapfrog lands on a Kia. *2015-04-28 - I Was Playing With That - Deathstroke interrupts the Runaways pizza outing. Someone else interrupts their fight. The Runaways interrupt EVERYTHING. *2015-07-08 - The Young Vamp...I Mean Avengers! - Molly Hayes gets cornered in a museum by a misunderstanding hero. There might be some chaos. *2015-09-20 - When Squirrels Attack - Forget about Skrulls, Gibborim, Alien Warriors, The Punisher, Evil Parents, Avengers and Supervillains. SQUIRREL!!!! AUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH! *2015-11-06 - Blueberries and Forgiveness - A pie-eating contest turns into something more serious. *2015-11-07 - Broken Break-In - Nico Minoru and Karolina Dean try to break into their old private school. It would have helped if either of them knew how. 2016 Logs *2016-10-31 - Bad Ending - Dracula attacks, on Halloween. Not everyone gets away this time. *2016-11-01 - Cutscene - Bad ending 2017 Logs *2017-08-25 - The Arena *2017-11-20 - Return To Life - Recovering from Arena, Nico spends some time decompressing with Asia. Gallery Category:Marvel Feature Category:Marvel Hero Category:New York City Category:Marvel Taken